Edmund Blair B. posted an article on Babel's Dawn - Nov 1, 2009, 10:45 pm
Download PDF of this post Here’s a book with a novel thesis: the English language has been, to coin a term, Vikingized. A creolized language is a grossly simple pidgin language that has been turned...
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Edmund Blair B. posted an article on Babel's Dawn - Oct 28, 2009, 3:30 pm
A couple of new books that are not quite on the topic of this blog, but are of related interest to regulars on this blog: Michael Tomasello, Why We Cooperate is a new title from  one of this blog...
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Edmund Blair B. posted an article on Babel's Dawn - Oct 26, 2009, 11:49 am
Me Tarzan. — You Jane. Could anybody have ever really talked in that super-simple manner? Download PDF of this post A plausible account of the evolution of syntax is coming into view. ...
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Edmund Blair B. posted an article on Babel's Dawn - Oct 24, 2009, 2:03 pm
I've been trying to track down information on a presentation this week in Honolulu at the American Society of Human Genetics Convention. Raymond Clarke of New South Wales, Australia reports that a...
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Edmund Blair B. posted an article on Babel's Dawn - Oct 22, 2009, 10:45 pm
Me Tarzan. — You Jane. Could anybody have ever really talked in that super-simple manner? Download PDF of this post A plausible account of the evolution of syntax is coming into view. I had almost...
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Edmund Blair B. posted an article on Babel's Dawn - Oct 18, 2009, 10:45 pm
George W. Bush was no dummy, but he was stubborn. No matter what new facts developed, he claimed that they proved what he had said all along. He devoted so much effort to gaining intelligence and then...
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Edmund Blair B. posted an article on Babel's Dawn - Oct 11, 2009, 10:45 pm
Rene Descartes was probably the last great thinker to try to explain the universe on the basis of definitions and logic alone, but he was not the last savant to explain the mind that way. Download PDF...
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Edmund Blair B. posted an article on Babel's Dawn - Oct 4, 2009, 10:45 pm
Run ... women run ... the women are running. Download PDF file of this post I managed to inspire a bit of a hullaballoo last week with my contention that protolanguage had done its job and it was no...
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Edmund Blair B. posted an article on Babel's Dawn - Oct 1, 2009, 9:30 am
Notice anything dubious about this screen-capture of the Discovery Channel's "Ardi" page? Ardi's eyes have white sclera. What is the evidence for that? Primate eyes tend to have black sclera. ...
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Edmund Blair B. posted an article on Babel's Dawn - Sep 27, 2009, 10:45 pm
Nicholas Copernicus University in Torun, Poland hosted the "Ways to Protolanguage" conference last week. The conference on “ways to protolanguage” held in Torun, Poland this week provided a good,...
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Edmund Blair B. posted an article on Babel's Dawn - Sep 26, 2009, 1:42 pm
Last week's American TV series Mad Men closed its episode with a father showing his daughter her newborn brother. The father explained that we don't yet know who the baby is. I'm reminded ...
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Edmund Blair B. posted an article on Babel's Dawn - Sep 25, 2009, 5:45 pm
One of the interesting scholars of protolanguage who consistently makes data-rich presentations is Ljiljana Progovac. She focuses on examples of “living fossils” of protolanguage. Living fossils a...
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Edmund Blair B. posted an article on Babel's Dawn - Sep 23, 2009, 7:20 pm
Photo: from Utopia Scientific Org site. This post is a bit off topic, but an entertaining elephant video was recently released. Scientists recorded sounds of elephants making an audible warning that ...
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Edmund Blair B. posted an article on Babel's Dawn - Sep 23, 2009, 4:00 am
The basic problem of studying the origins of language is, to understate matters, language leaves few fossils. There are five techniques for getting around this problem Tao Gong told audience members a...
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Edmund Blair B. posted an article on Babel's Dawn - Sep 22, 2009, 4:48 pm
Language-users have a special problem in linguistic unreliability, i.e., the meaning the speaker intended may not match the meaning the listener takes. This problem was discussed at the conference on ...
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Edmund Blair B. posted an article on Babel's Dawn - Sep 22, 2009, 10:30 am
In both children and the human lineage, word learning predates rule making, but rule making eventually evolved as a way to relieve the stress on memorization, reported (or at least I think they report...
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Edmund Blair B. posted an article on Babel's Dawn - Sep 21, 2009, 11:45 am
Protolanguage evolved perhaps as much as two million years ago, in the context of stone tool use, but was already used for complex symbolic actions the University of California (Berkeley)’s anthropo...
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Edmund Blair B. posted an article on Babel's Dawn - Sep 21, 2009, 10:30 am
Language and the language faculty co-evolved and to understand one you must understand the other; however, we do not yet have a good theory of how culture evolves, Luke McCrohon of the University of T...
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Edmund Blair B. posted an article on Babel's Dawn - Sep 21, 2009, 4:00 am
“Bodily mimesis” (i.e., using one’s body for mimicry or representation) provided the social and cognitive prerequisites for the emergence of protolanguage, linguist Jordan Zlatev from Lund Unive...
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Edmund Blair B. posted an article on Babel's Dawn - Sep 20, 2009, 10:45 pm
I will be posting several reports this week (Monday through Wednesday). The University of Nicholas Copernicus in Torun, Poland is hosting a conference on protolanguage (Ways to Protolanguage) and I pl...
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Edmund Blair B. posted an article on Babel's Dawn - Sep 19, 2009, 2:36 pm
YouTube has a film clip (here) on language origins. It strikes me as a little naive, but it has some nice footage of ape and human gestures. It runs about 3 and a half minutes.
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Edmund Blair B. posted an article on Babel's Dawn - Sep 13, 2009, 10:45 pm
The Broadway musical Avenue Q includes a song titled "Purpose" that expresses a typical musical song idea, I gotta find purpose, I gotta find me. Download PDF file of this post On this blog,...
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Edmund Blair B. posted an article on Babel's Dawn - Sep 6, 2009, 10:45 pm
A painting of Lord Byron dressed in an Albanian costume. (See Byron’s Letters.) Download PDF of this post Last week’s post was the first for my third anniversary summing up of what I’ve learne...
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Edmund Blair B. posted an article on Babel's Dawn - Aug 30, 2009, 10:45 pm
In the pre-digital days this ugly machine, the Movieola, was the secret of the movie's power. Using this machine, film editors could cut scenes, so that the movie forces our attention here and the...
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Edmund Blair B. posted an article on Babel's Dawn - Aug 26, 2009, 9:19 am
Infants master speech so easily that  many adults are astonished by how hard it is to get machines to repeat the trick. Ask a computer to type, “Machines can recognize speech,” and on a good day ...
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Edmund Blair B. posted an article on Babel's Dawn - Aug 23, 2009, 10:45 pm
Scholars go spear to spear over what a piece of work is man. Blue sees him as the paragon of animals, red as the quintessence of dust. Download PDF of this post Oooo, what fun. A quarrel has b...
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Edmund Blair B. posted an article on Babel's Dawn - Aug 16, 2009, 10:45 pm
Louis and Mary Leakey explored Olduvai Gorge for about 30 years before finding their first bipedal ape, which they named Zinjanthropus. The discovery pushed the story of human evolution back beyond 1....
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Edmund Blair B. posted an article on Babel's Dawn - Aug 12, 2009, 10:45 pm
I see Tanzania is today beginning a celebration of the Leakey discovery of the “Zinjanthropus“ fossil (now called Paranthropus). The find occurred 50 years and 1 month ago, on July 17, 1959. It’...
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Edmund Blair B. posted an article on Babel's Dawn - Aug 9, 2009, 10:45 pm
Music is universal among cultures and so is speech. How did that happen? Download The PDF file of this post Before children start to talk, they babble and coo. Why? The usual answer answer i...
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Edmund Blair B. posted an article on Babel's Dawn - Aug 9, 2009, 8:13 pm
I see a blog with the unusual title of The Wonder of Whiffling has appeared. It is far more whimsical than this blog, but whimsy is good..
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Edmund Blair B. posted an article on Babel's Dawn - Aug 2, 2009, 10:45 pm
Catching a bug is a natural ability for a Frog and comes as naturally as seeing the bug. Is speaking a sentence as natural to us? Download PDF of post Evolving a language is much easier than e...
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Edmund Blair B. posted an article on Babel's Dawn - Jul 26, 2009, 10:45 pm
I’m away this weekend celebrating the marriage of a friend of more than 30 years. However, I can at least mention that a team at George Washington University has published a study of the “Broca�...
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Edmund Blair B. posted an article on Babel's Dawn - Jul 22, 2009, 10:45 pm

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Edmund Blair B. posted an article on Babel's Dawn - Jul 21, 2009, 10:45 pm
"Angelina Jolie" has at least three meanings: (1) the name of an actress; (2) any beautiful woman; or (3) any unattractive woman. Download PDF of post The past two posts have looked at the poverty o...
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